The Disinterested Media

An interesting anecdote about Alastair Campbell from John Humphrys’ book Lost for Words. In order to follow the story, you need to know two things about Campbell. Firstly that he was Downing Street’s Director of Communication (and could therefore be assumed to know a little about the English language) and secondly that he often accused the British media (in particular the BBC) of being biased against the government.

Apparently, when he left his job at Downing Street he started to offer briefings to organisations who wanted to improve their communications strategies. One of the first of these seminars was called “How to Deal with a Cynical and Disinterested Media”.

This is one of those cases where English has two similar sounding words with completely different meanings. “Disinterested” means impartial or objective. And that is, of course, exactly what you want from the media. I suspect the word they actually wanted was “uninterested”.

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